Name? Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)
Westphalian identity? Mexican
Age? 68
Why is he in the news? A group known as Guacamaya hacked the Mexican Ministry of Defence (Sedena). Triple the amount of information that was recovered during the Pandora Papers was leaked, ranging from the growing power of the military over civil government, their self-protection from human rights investigations, to the government’s use of the Israeli Pegasus software to track journalists. AMLO, who has a bad track record with the protection of the press, is under fire.
Why do we care? The army is a famously opaque institution in Mexico whose mission has recently been renewed as the primary security institution for the country, and 6 terabytes are now open to the public for scrutiny. AMLO has insisted that his government has nothing to hide, despite the fact that the Sedena leak shows the tracking of senators and governors to pinpoint governmental connections to organised crime; and the tracking of media loyalty to the government.
Why should you care? A few weeks ago, we spoke about AMLO’s growing reliance on the armed forces in Mexico for governance. One of the reasons that he is able to justify the tracking of civilians and the self-protecting operations is because the mission of the armed forces is protected within the concept of “national security”. You should care 6/10 about the divisions of government blurring.
Who else cares? José Lette Seminario, the Chief of Public Relations in the Peruvian army, is critical of Mexican journalists who are revealing information about a national defense plan in the case of a Chilean attack on its southern border. The two countries have had several territorial disputes, but the likeliness of a blown out armed conflict is low. Seminario was rather upset at how easy it was to reveal state secrets.
Any further comments? The Guacamaya have hacked a series of governments including Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and Chile.
